Walkie power

I grew up in a village where life obeyed the rules of the pack. I always hated him and still love him

“Lenk, you just don't tell anyone. Especially mom. But two years ago I was pregnant, ”the fifteen -year -old Alinka whispers to me twelve -year -old.”

I wanted to get scared, but did not have time.

“Now P. will come, we will go to Sabantuy. He will be with a friend, so you will come with us. ”

Sabantuy is a deep ravine under the mountain on the road from the village. Once a year, Sabantuy is celebrated there, but the ravine is always called that. There was no sabantuy that day.

P. with a friend carefully examined me, except that they did not look into the teeth. I did not want to go to the ravine, but Alinka was instructed to look after me, and I - to obey her and not stay at home alone.

It was more interesting with Alinka to the boys, she gave P. to touch herself and joked about sex. I went like a slaughterhouse.

We went down to the ravine already at dusk. It was cold, dark and scary. A small river flowed at the foot of the mountain and trees grew in a row. Everyone knew this place - the grave plate did not allow to forget or skip. Many years ago, two brothers crashed here to death here, rolling on a sled. They were searched for a very long time.

In the ravine, we quickly divided: Alinka and P. retired behind the trees, and his friend led me into a neighboring grove.

For another three years I did not realize that sex was expected from me that evening. And what did Alinka with P. also had him. I felt a threat and discomfort, but I did not realize myself with a sexual object and even hypothetically did not suggest that someone could consider me me.

I don’t know what would happen that evening if a friend P. himself had not grinded. His forehead and hands sweated - he constantly wiped them on his pants. When we went out of the field of view of P., he exhaled in relief. It turned out that the ravine is the last place in which he would like to be. Just P. is one of the most popular boys in the village. It was impossible to show him that you did not want with girls in a ravine - he is not crazy. Perhaps he would have behaved differently if I had not seen that I stubbornly did not read his attempts to speak with me as a potential partner, I did not see flirting and look at him like a bell in a bar.

The remaining half an hour we talked about nonsense. P. left the forest even more popular: the next day everyone knew about his new peel. But Alinka, now all his life had to make excuses and say "there was nothing."

A friend P. lied something, so that everything was in order with his reputation. That day I fell out of sight of the pack - I did not want to play by the rules, and even more - I dared to pretend that I did not understand the rules.

I did not understand them when I kissed P.'s new girl in a wooden public toilet on a real Sabantua.

From one hospital

I was born in the village of Kamsky Polyans. This is a rarity: the Hospital there worked with interruptions - they constantly found the intestinal stick, and he now and then was closed to prevention. So we could be the same time, but someone was born in the village, and someone in Nizhnekamsk. And in childhood, we paid attention to this - from Nizhnekamsk was not a real local.

Kama clearings are 15 thousand engineers and builders who once have come here to build a Tatar nuclear power plant . They did not manage to build a station, nor go to live somewhere in a decent place. A picnic on an abandoned reactor and traveling to Elabuga (Marina Tsvetaeva committed suicide there) or to Kazan (many who committed suicide there) became the only entertainment of local residents.

A distinctive feature of life in a small village - your environment is formed nine months before your birth - with whom your mother in the hospital lay, with that you will communicate for the next 18 years.

The girls did not accept me in their company, so Oleg, Maxim and Pasha have become my “family” from two years old.

For example, Maxim and I together brought so much noise in kindergarten that we came up with a separate punishment for us - one was put on a chair without toys and forbidden to talk with the second. But we drowned the hearts of the educators - the second just silently played near the chair next to the punished - and after a couple of minutes we were released.

Later, stupidly and fearlessly, the boys and I climbed the abandoned construction sites, built huts, saved puppies from sewers, tasted ants and represented themselves with rangers. Once at three in the morning, we waved on a bicycle on a beaver lake for fishing. They threw themselves with pocket money, bought a network instead of food, unraveling it for three hours, didn’t catch anything, hungry, drank boiled water from the river. While the network was set around the neck in the water, they were afraid that the beavers would be bitten. Then Pasha became bad from river tea, Oleg fell painfully while he wrote in the bushes, and Maxim found incomprehensible traces on the shore, convinced us that this was a monster, and we fled to his house - look at the encyclopedia, whose traces could be. We stopped on the fact that it was a beaver slipped on the mud when he got out of the water.

And then the boys changed.

Oleg was the first to disappear. Once he simply did not go for a walk with us. The second time, the third, fourth. On the fifth, we stumbled upon him ourselves-our Oleg-Black Ranger turned into Oleg from the seventeenth house, which could no longer ride with us on a sled under the soundtracks of our beloved cartoons, talk about salvation of peace and pass Sonic on a computer.

He held to the last. But he began to look five years older. Every year, more and more his yard friends adjoined the other side, making his choice more and more unbearable.

The more he felt like a part of the pack, the more he was shy. We could not protect him from bullying at school. And his new friends could. And they did not have to do anything for this - the bullying now simply knew that Oleg could not be touched, because they would touch them otherwise.

Illustration: Vlad Milushkin for TD

Cool in pink pants

Pack at school mentally called the village. A general set of norms and rules, a system of rewards and punishments: a woman is an empty place, a leader runs a pack - not one person, but a company that is currently most popular and/or power. With the first textbook on sociology, it became clear that this is just a society in miniature: traditions, patriarchate, near-tier culture, AUE and the remnants of groups from the 90s.

Poverty, but proximity to the innovative capital of the republic made the village a unique place: groups from the 90s have not yet lost their influence here, but new subcultures became popular almost as quickly as in the city. At some point, children for the bandits “on the counter” were put in the guys in tight pink pants, who popularized tectonics in his free time from crime.

The boys “before” and “after” the choice of the roof were very different. It was like scenes from Twilight (sorry) when it seemed that werewolves were pressed on Jacob to “choose” them and abandon Bella and other ordinary school friends.

You could refuse the “roof”, but then you were called a “woman” or ignored. Given that the fights in the village were started very often, it was scary to remain without protection.

This happened to Oleg: he tried not to choose for many years. But cute and kind Oleg lived in one of the most dysfunctional houses. There he was crushed by a sense of mystical duty to “his own”, to the “brothers”. Every year more and more his friends adjoined the other side. He was often scared. He often owed something to someone.

Maxim was able to avoid this system, for this for a long time was excluded from the circle of “men” in principle. Recently, one of those who occupied an enviable place in the hierarchy said that he always admired Maxim for this.

One way or another, over time, my friends were over.

Invisible

For a long time I did not understand why my friends were so afraid to come to the street on the street on the older guys. I considered myself very bold, I sent all the men far and for a long time. They did not pay attention to me. I did not understand that the reason is not in my courage, but in my invisibility for them, while I am a) little b) girl.

Until sixteen, I did not get out of the museum - my beloved teacher in time came up with a lesson and made a guide. The main rule is that you cannot read from the folder. I can still tell everything about the first days after the Chernobyl accident and the biography of the Gabdulla Tukai.

Behind the long bangs I hid acne, for silence - braces. A short crooked key from the museum, inaccessible to any of the schoolchildren, was my salvation. I knew that in the stove and under the baby in the Old Russian cradle, sweets were hidden, and behind the cabinet - iron tukai in barbed wire, which tore me not only tights. The museum is a small glass box in the middle of a school corridor. It was impossible to look inside because of tinted glasses-but from the inside I could see everyone. I ate sweets, sitting on a dummy of bed in a Russian hut, and secretly looked at the popular children, whom the flock did not reject.

My peaceful existence came to an end when the school was completed by the next galaxy of beautiful and popular teenagers, whom the village was operated as leading events, kVNSHANS, dancers, singers, actors. For this “work”, children were chosen as free from prejudices (because on stage it was often necessary to stand in ridiculous costumes) and with competent speech. Directly from the museum they put me on the stage and began to re -learn to say: not evenly and quietly, like a guide, but loudly, brightly and sarcastically.

By this time, my acne ended, my teeth straightened and tits grew. And then the village “saw me” again. The scene for many legitimized my existence, and frequent flickering at all events worked as a textbook - they recognized me, which means they loved.

Tits with burden

For almost a year I did not notice that I was no longer judged. No matter what I do, whoever I communicated with - everything was at least acceptable, but most often - cool.

I did not understand then that my “popularity” did not come with the boobs: it was limited by them. With them, a counter was included in the kit, calculating my reputation.

The guy had to choose so carefully, as if an iron throne was at the stake - because he had alreadyn’t gone to the grandmother, a third of all your friends met.

- Len, they say you are with Timur? Friendly advice is not necessary.

- And what about him?

- Many people talk about him!

- What did he do?

- He is very strange. He loves *** [cunnilingus]. Not like a man.

Reputation has always been to stake - and relations between different social levels acted destructively on it.

At a certain level of popularity, a loophole with improving her status thanks to relations worked quite equally - you could raise the status of a guy in the same way as a more popular guy raised yours.

And all these differences were easily erased by moving to another city, away from the vigilant supervision of a pack - then one could start dating who was ridiculed “for the company” in the village.

The limited number of residents led to the fact that from a certain age, the girl and her mother could have the same potential partners. So one guy was running after me who had lived with his mother’s friend before.

But these were all exceptions accessible to a small number of people with a decent "rating". On average, the woman in the village was consumable.

We have a “clearing of love”, a mountain, which is otherwise called “e*un mountain”, and there is little fun in this. The girl who traveled there with a guy became an object of general persecution. It doesn’t matter that sex could not be, it doesn’t matter if they are found, it doesn’t matter that the girl also has the right to just want sex - now she was a whore, and it was almost impossible to change it.

I hardly knew Dilyar, but I admired her energy and a sense of humor: she was a kVNSHAN. Once she stopped appearing on the street - it turned out, moved to another city - to live in a boarding school and study in a technical school. I tried to find out the reason, but they answered me, they say, do not ask, do not flaunt, she is not worth it. Only a couple of years ago I found out that the cross on her life in the village put oral sex with a guy in whom she was in love. He, as usual, immediately told everyone about it and became only more popular. And she did not say “there was nothing” as she should, she loved him and did not wait for a trick.

More than seven years have passed - but if you ask about Dilyar in the village, you first hear this story.

The place of the woman is nowhere

Women in the pack were not considered independent people. Your place was determined by the father, older brother, guy. At different ages, different ones got off your hands. You could be arbitrarily impudent and “hold the eggs” the whole village - the guy was convinced that when he finally chooses you as a wife, you will have to change, settled down and “forget these nonsense”.

In the 11th grade, I was already sure that I had nothing to fear in the village. And then on my eighteenth birthday I was beaten by Misha, the guy of my girlfriend, and I remembered that in the general coordinate system I am just a woman.

This was a typical Hollywood combination of circumstances. A second before the incident, a friend went to the toilet, the most pumped -up guy in the apartment spilled water and went to change into the room (on the same side as the toilet), and I went to open the door, despite the eye and not asking anything because I was waiting for the guests.

His passion jumped out on the swearing of a drunken Misha from the toilet, and from the next room - a pumped -up friend without a T -shirt - they came out at the same time from one corner. Misha did not understand whether this coincidence was accidentally, and began to beat everything that moves and does not move, including my face and door jamb.

Three guys barely pushed him out of the apartment, then I convinced him to leave completely. The second half of the birthday, we took turns applying frozen fish to the faces. In the morning, the guys got up before me, washed the dishes and left breakfast and a note on the table - "a pleasant appetite, we are waiting." They were waiting for me at volleyball competitions on which they performed.

I got up, washed, I realized that the jaw was so swollen so that I couldn’t eat, cried with resentment - to eat salads in the morning after the holiday my favorite pastime - and I went to support the guys at the competition.

“I will not allow anyone to break into my apartment and touch my girl,” my mother said when she returned home. The stepfather suggested taking revenge - I refused.

Later it turned out that he was still looking for the guilty, and he was not alone. My handsome, redhead, who served at a hot point, friend Ilnur, after a couple of months, said that there were many who "went to talk." In that system of coordinates, Misha was allowed to behave with his girlfriend, but “so” to do with me - no: “He understands that he is to blame, he understood who he had come to. He apologized before me, but said that he would not be, not in his style, he could not. ”

By tone, it was clear that this was the end, "they decided everything like a man." We decided with a guy who was not even close to that night in the apartment.

After some time, the stepfather told the stepfather that he and his friends were also looking for Misha, but when they found it, it was too late. Misha estimated the number of requests received to him and flew to work north for six months.

I did not take part either in the initiation of the “investigation” or in its completion.

Swording territory

I had a zoo in my yard. A dozen small boxes with locked animals. Very small boxes with very large animals. And at night they cried.

The most heartbreaking sounds were made by a lion. And there was nowhere to hide from them, because “in the yard” is not an exaggeration.

Once, piles were driven into this wasteland and planned to build a residential building, but in the late 80s, the construction in the village got up-the wasteland remained an empty and, part-time, my yard. And a large empty space in the city center was capitalized by touring zoos, circuses, fairs.

The zoo, circus or fair is the only reasons why strangers were allowed to be in our courtyard, where the main woman was the main one. She lived (still alive, God grant her health) in the central entrance and on the ground floor: an ideal place to monitor the territory.

Illustration: Vlad Milushkin for TD

Everyone in life had hooligans who broke their sand castles or snowmen. So, in our yard, snowmen stood until mid -spring. The sandbox was always intact, luxurious flower beds and the constantly modernized pride of the courtyard - a bench.

It was all the work of Baba Sveta. She did not let the men looking for a place in the yard to drink, gopniks and high school students. For a smaller weight category, her granddaughter - the youngest Sveta. The years up to 14 decided who could be in the courtyard, who is not and who has any place in the courtyard hierarchy.

For example, at the house opposite, according to the plan of designers and administration, there was a common courtyard with ours, only Sveta did not think so - and the children from that yard never played on the "our" territory. In my first year, I came home to visit and, for the first time, seeing the “strangers” in my yard, completely irrationally felt indignation and anger - “how they dared”.

You were a stranger in another school, in the classroom, the sports section, but this was all forgotten in the face of a common alarm - strangers in the village.

“Well, beat a bit, there is such. Happens. They caught me three times, ”Kirill said cheerfully. He came to Christine - his girlfriend. He was beaten because he was from Nizhnekamsk. Fun - because he suffered for the girl and this will be counted from all sides. Most likely, he was beaten by every visit. But most of all it went to the village - they knew the rules and immediately rode a crowd.

Не имело значения, нравится ли эта девушка кому-то из местных, она была просто собственностью поселка: самки стаи не должны спариваться с чужаками. Саму ее никто не спрашивал.

Бонус от стаи

Пару лет назад под Новый год в Казани у меня зазвонил телефон. Взволнованная знакомая быстро протараторила что-то о пьяной администраторше, обвинениях в украденной кофточке, «мы заперты», «требует пять тысяч», просила помочь.

Знакомая была из поселка. Она была не одна. Каждая из четырех девочек, попавших под руку пьяной администраторше торгового центра, позвонила нескольким своим друзьям. Те позвонили своим…

Первого камполянца я встретила в метро. Потом второго, третьего, восьмого… Меньше чем через полчаса после звонка торговый центр был окружен камполянцами всех возрастов. Большая часть просто стояла неподалеку, не все даже поднялись до нужного этажа — они просто были рядом.

Еще через полчаса девчонки поехали домой.

Я мечтала уехать из поселка, в котором твои действия жестко ограничены и слово «прогресс» — ругательство. Я обожаю людей, которые мне достались просто потому, что наши мамы вместе лежали в роддоме. Сейчас я — бритая почти налысо феминистка. Многие в поселке уже поставили на мне крест. Но если мне понадобится помощь — я позвоню камполянцу, и он ответит.